Scientific Studies of Reading

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Effects of Orthographic, Morphological and

Semantic Overlap on Short-Term Memory for
Words in Typical and Atypical Development

Helen L. Breadmore & Julia M. Carroll

To cite this article: Helen L. Breadmore & Julia M. Carroll (2016) Effects of Orthographic,
Morphological and Semantic Overlap on Short-Term Memory for Words in Typical and Atypical
Development, Scientific Studies of Reading, 20:6, 471-489, DOI: 10.1080/10888438.2016.1246554

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2016.1246554

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Julia M. Carroll

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SCIENTIFIC STUDIES OF READING
2016, VOL. 20, NO. 6, 471–489
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2016.1246554

Effects of Orthographic, Morphological and Semantic Overlap on

Short-Term Memory for Words in Typical and Atypical
Development
Helen L. Breadmore and Julia M. Carroll
Coventry University

ABSTRACT
Little is known about implicit morphological processing in typical and
atypical readers. These studies investigate this using a probe detection
task with lures sharing morphological, orthographic, or semantic overlap
with the probe. Intermediate and advanced readers (reading ages = 9;1–
12;9) perform more poorly when there is more linguistic overlap. Novice
readers (reading ages = 5;7–8;0) were influenced only by orthographic
overlap and not by semantics, indicating that use of orthographic processes
typically precedes integration of semantic and morphological skills.
Children with otitis media (repeated ear infections) had phonological
awareness difficulties but performed age appropriately on the probe detec-
tion task, indicating that morphological processing is not constrained by
phonology. In contrast, dyslexic children’s performance reflected a failure to
remember distinctions between words sharing root morphemes. Dyslexic
children are sensitive to morphology but may over-rely on root mor-
phemes. This pattern differed from reading-ability-matched children and
children with circumscribed phonological difficulties.

Morphological awareness is closely linked to literacy attainment (Casalis, Deacon, & Pacton, 2011;
Deacon & Kirby, 2004). A useful distinction can be made between morphological awareness and
morphological processing. Morphological awareness refers to the ability to explicitly manipulate
morphemes, often productively. Morphological processing is the implicit use of morphemes in
reading or spelling (Deacon, Parrila, & Kirby, 2008). Most prior research into morphological
processing in literacy development and impairment has correlated explicit measures of morpholo-
gical awareness with reading ability (e.g., Berninger et al., 2006; Casalis, Colé, & Sopo, 2004;
Cunningham & Carroll, 2015; Shankweiler et al., 1995), for example, segmenting complex words
into morphemes or generating complex words for a given stem. Research that has examined
morphological processing has focused on spelling of morphologically complex words using para-
digms that similarly require explicit manipulation of morphemes (e.g., Egan & Pring, 2004; Tsesmeli
& Seymour, 2006). Less is known about the development of morphological processing in reading.
This article examines the development of morphological processes in typical and atypical reading
development.
Most models of reading development confer a pivotal role on phonological awareness and
decoding. Meanwhile, the roles of morphological and semantic awareness and processing are rarely
discussed in much depth (Deacon, Tong, & Mimeau, in press). Reading models that do mention
morphology typically suggest that it is integrated into the system after an initial phase of basic
phonemic decoding and is closely linked to orthographic processing (Ehri, 1995; Ehri, Cardoso-
Martins, & Carroll, 2013; Nunes, Bryant, & Bindman, 1997b). For example, although traditional dual

CONTACT Helen L. Breadmore helen.breadmore@coventry.ac.uk Centre for Research in Psychology, Behaviour and
Achievement, Coventry University, Priory Street, Coventry, CV1 5FB, United Kingdom.
Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC © 2016 Helen L. Breadmore and Julia M. Carroll
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the
original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
472 H. L. BREADMORE AND J. M. CARROLL

route models (Coltheart, 2005) do not explicitly describe the role for morphology, more recent
conceptualisations describe the use of multiple fine-grain codes (including morphemes) to access
meaning through the orthographic route (Grainger, Lété, Bertand, Dufau, & Ziegler, 2012; Grainger
& Ziegler, 2011). Development involves the acquisition and parallel use of multiple and increasingly
coarse-grain codes. Decoding first theories predict not only that morphological processing emerges
late in development but also that phonological difficulties would further hold back morphological
processing. Others, however, argue that morphology can be used from the earliest stages of literacy
acquisition (Deacon, Conrad, & Pacton, 2008; Pacton & Deacon, 2008; Treiman & Bourassa, 2000;
Treiman & Cassar, 1996).
Both morphological awareness and processing are impaired in dyslexia (Deacon, Parilla, et al.,
2008; Deacon et al., in press). Children with dyslexia have been shown to perform below
chronological-age- (CA-) matched peers on morphological awareness measures in many lan-
guages (Berthiaume & Daigle, 2014; Carlisle, 1987; Casalis et al., 2004; Duranovic, Tinjak, &
Turbic-Hadzagic, 2014; Egan & Pring, 2004; Egan & Tainturier, 2011; Joanisse, Manis, Keating, &
Seidenberg, 2000; Leong, 1999; McBride-Chang et al., 2008; McBride-Chang, Liu, Wong, Wong,
& Shu, 2012; Shu, McBride-Chang, Wu, & Liu, 2006; Siegel, 2008; Tsesmeli & Seymour, 2006;
Vogel, 1977). They have also been shown to use morphological processes (in reading and
spelling) less than age-matched peers (Breadmore & Carroll, 2016; Carlisle, Stone, & Katz,
2001; Fisher, Shankweiler, & Liberman, 1985; Hauerwas & Walker, 2003; Leong, 1989). To
examine whether children with dyslexia show atypical morphological processing given their
level of literacy skills, a better comparison is against younger, reading-ability-matched peers.
For the most part, children with dyslexia perform similarly to reading-ability-matched children
on oral measures of morphological awareness (Casalis et al., 2004; Egan & Pring, 2004; Egan &
Tainturier, 2011; Robertson, Joanisse, Desroches, & Terry, 2012; Tsesmeli & Seymour, 2006).
However, the picture for morphological processing is less clear. Some have found weaknesses in
morphological spelling (Carlisle, 1987; Egan & Pring, 2004; Egan & Tainturier, 2011; Hauerwas &
Walker, 2003; Tsesmeli & Seymour, 2006) whereas others have found no difference compared to
ability matches (Bourassa, Treiman, & Kessler, 2006; Breadmore & Carroll, 2016). However, it is
worth noting that very few studies have examined morphological processing in dyslexic children
using a reading-ability-match design (Deacon et al., in press).
Despite the abundant evidence of morphological difficulties in dyslexia, the underlying cause of
these difficulties are subject to ongoing debate (Deacon, Parilla, et al., 2008). Joanisse et al. (2000)
argued that phonological and morphological impairments in children with language impairment and
phonological dyslexia are both outcomes of a central underlying linguistic or metalinguistic diffi-
culty. Others argue that a morphological deficit can result from a phonological deficit (Cunningham
& Carroll, 2015). This could be because of the complex phonological properties of morphemes or
because morpho-orthographic representation occurs only after an initial focus on phonemic decod-
ing (Ehri et al., 2013; Nunes, Bryant, & Bindman, 1997a, 1997b). One way to examine this issue is to
focus on children with relatively circumscribed phonological difficulties (those with a history of
repeated ear infections) to investigate whether this group shows morphological impairments.
The majority of previous assessments have used offline morphological awareness tasks. For
example, children are asked whether there is a “little word” inside words such as corner or teacher
(Carlisle & Nomanbhoy, 1993) or which word correctly completes a morphological analogy (e.g.,
teach: teacher/bake: ?; Nunes et al., 1997a). These tasks require children to reflect upon the language
they use and therefore make metalinguistic demands (Gombert, 1992). Recent evidence suggests that
children with dyslexia may show particular deficits in metalinguistic tasks despite normal lexical
representations (Mundy & Carroll, 2012; Ramus, Marshall, Rosen, & Van Der Lely, 2013; Ramus &
Szenkovits, 2008). Here we introduce and assess a task that measures use of morphological informa-
tion in short-term memory with minimal metalinguistic demands. We compare typically developing
children, children with dyslexia, and children with atypical phonology but relatively good literacy to
tease apart influences of dyslexia, literacy, and phonological skill.
 SCIENTIFIC STUDIES OF READING 473

It has been suggested that difficulties using phonemic decoding may lead individuals with
phonological impairments to rely on morphological processing to a greater extent than typical
individuals (profoundly deaf children: Breadmore, Olson, & Krott, 2012; dyslexic adults: Leikin &
Hagit, 2006). At the beginning of development, this strategy is less successful than phonemic
decoding, and therefore children who use morphemes early in reading acquisition gain less experi-
ence of accurately decoding the meaning of words, which could further hold back the development
of phonological awareness/decoding and advanced morphological skills (Deacon, Parilla, et al.,
2008).
Rastle, Davis, and New (2004) used a priming paradigm to demonstrate morphological decom-
position in word recognition (lexical decision) by typical adults. Although this paradigm is free from
metalinguistic demands, some studies have found poor readers to perform at chance in childhood
(Duncan, Grey, Quemart, & Casalis, 2010). Moreover, priming relies on rapid and automatic
activation of lexical items, which may be less consistent in children, particularly those with dyslexia
(Breadmore & Carroll, in press; Carroll & Breadmore, under review). Hence the priming paradigm
may not be appropriate for studying linguistic processes within developmental dyslexia. An alter-
native approach is to examine the effect of overlap between morphologically related words in short-
term memory.
Representation of linguistic features in short-term memory is often examined by manipulating
within-list similarity. Phonological and/or orthographic similarity reduces recall accuracy, resulting
in false recall and recognition (Baddeley & Hitch, 1994; Walker, Hitch, & Duroe, 1993). Semantic
similarity also leads to false recall, but the magnitude of the effect is weaker than phonological
similarity (McDermott & Watson, 2001; Thapar & McDermott, 2001). In the present studies, within-
list items are unrelated. Linguistic overlap is instead manipulated between a target lure on the list
and a recognition probe. This paradigm has been used less often but avoids strategic use of over-
lapping information. Consistent with the findings for within-list similarity, probe paradigms simi-
larly induce high rates of false recognition for probes with orthographic, phonological, or semantic
similarity to a lure (Breadmore, 2007; Coane, McBride, Raulerson, & Jordan, 2007; Crosson et al.,
1999; Shulman, 1970). High rates of false recognition are observed for target probes with morpho-
logical overlap; indeed the effect may be greater than that attributed to the combination of ortho-
graphic/phonological and semantic properties (Breadmore, 2007). To our knowledge, only
Breadmore (2007) previously used this paradigm to investigate use of linguistic information by
children, but here the focus was on the abilities of profoundly deaf adolescents.

The present study

Children memorised visually presented lists of words and then pressed a keyboard button to indicate
whether a probe word was on the list. We manipulated the relationship between the probe and a
target lure such that there was either no relationship or morphological (e.g., postal–post), pseudo-
morphological (e.g., metal–met), or semantic (e.g., street–road) overlap. In this way we examine
whether children retained detailed representations of this linguistic information. Deacon, Parilla,
et al. (2008) argued that written presentation and nonverbal response reduces the impact of
phonological weaknesses in dyslexia. Hence, in the present study we avoided any explicit oral output.
Participants make a signal detection decision on the basis of whether the match between the
probe word and their memory of the target is good enough. Linguistic overlap between probe and
target lures hence increases the likelihood that participants falsely accept that the probe was present
on the list. The more overlapping information, the more likely participants are to incorrectly accept
that they have seen the probe on the list (a false positive). The use of this information is implicit
rather than strategic. This task can, in principle, be completed by children even if the words on the
list are not in their lexicon and they use purely visual processes to memorise the words. Hence the
task is particularly useful for examining development of implicit processing. On the basis of dual/
multiple route models of reading (Grainger et al., 2012; Grainger & Ziegler, 2011), we hypothesise
474 H. L. BREADMORE AND J. M. CARROLL

that advanced readers use multiple sources of linguistic information in this task and therefore are
more likely to falsely accept probes that share many features with the target lure (i.e., in the
morphological condition where the words overlap in terms of morphological, orthographic/phono-
logical, and semantic information) than probes that share only one feature (i.e., pseudo-morpholo-
gical or semantic overlap conditions).
In Experiment 1 we present evidence that the paradigm is sensitive and reliable in typically
developing children and examine effects of linguistic overlap across development by comparing
novice, intermediate, and advanced readers. “Decoding first” accounts (Ehri, 1995; Ehri et al., 2013;
Nunes et al., 1997b) predict that younger children will show only effects of orthographic/phonolo-
gical processing, whereas effects of morphological and semantic processing will emerge later in
development. In contrast, some theoretical accounts might argue that even novice readers will be
sensitive to morphological overlap (Deacon, Conrad, et al., 2008; Pacton & Deacon, 2008; Treiman &
Bourassa, 2000; Treiman & Cassar, 1996).
In Experiment 2 we examine whether phonological skills influence use of morphology by
examining children with otitis media (OM)—repeated ear infections that often cause fluctuating
hearing levels (also known as glue ear). Accounts highlighting the link between phonology and
morphology (e.g., Cunningham & Carroll, 2015) predict that the phonological difficulties resulting
from OM will also impair morphological and semantic processing.
In Experiment 3 we examine whether dyslexia uniquely affects performance. We hypothesise that
children with dyslexia will have weaknesses in sensitivity to precise linguistic information, and
therefore we anticipate that they will generally make more false positives when linguistic properties
of the probe overlap with the target lure. Of particular interest, though, is whether use of morpho-
logical processing is impaired in dyslexia, as has been found with explicit morphological awareness
tasks.

Experiment 1: Typical development

Experiment 1 examines use of linguistic information in short-term memory in typical development.
We compare novice, intermediate, and advanced readers’ ability to reject a probe word that shares
morphological, pseudo-morphological, semantic, or no overlap in linguistic features with a target lure.
Comparisons of the magnitude of effects in different conditions will illustrate the extent to which
children use each source of linguistic information in memory. We hypothesise that advanced readers will
process pseudo-morphological, semantic, and morphological information, consistent with dual/multiple
route models of skilled reading (Grainger et al., 2012; Grainger & Ziegler, 2011). All conditions where the
target lure and probe overlap will increase rates of false positives compared to when they are unrelated.
Moreover, because words that share morphological overlap (e.g., postal–post) also share these other
linguistic properties (orthographic, phonological, and semantic overlap), the morphological effect will be
greater than any other condition.
We expect to see general developmental differences on performance on the task. Accuracy will
increase with literacy skill as lexical representations become increasingly well specified and more rapidly
accessible. Hence, we predict that novice readers will generally (across all conditions) have lower
performance than intermediate readers, who in turn will be weaker than advanced readers.
Most important, “decoding first” theories lead us to hypothesise that novice readers with
incomplete or slow decoding skills will initially focus on the orthographic/phonological proper-
ties of words in order to perform this task. Only orthographic/phonological overlap will increase
rates of false positives for novice readers; there will be less effect of semantic overlap (e.g., street–
road). Hence, rates of false positives for words sharing morphological (e.g., postal–post) and
pseudo-morphological (e.g., metal–met) overlap will be equal, because these conditions are
matched for orthographic/phonological overlap and the semantic information is not automati-
cally activated.
 SCIENTIFIC STUDIES OF READING 475

Method
Participants
Typically developing participants were 135 (63 female) primary school children ages 5;7–11;6 years,
with standard scores on the British Ability Scales: Third Edition word reading test (Elliot & Smith,
2011) between 90 and 120. They were recruited from 20 primary schools in the Midlands, United
Kingdom, through opt in consent as part of a larger study (Authors blinded for review) and were all
monolingual native English speakers. None of these children’s parents reported their having dyslexia,
hearing impairment, or a history of repeated ear infection. Some of these children acted as reading
age (RA) and CA controls in Experiments 2 and 3. One child had missing data from two trials.
Three groups were formed on the basis of the children’s reading ability. Twenty-four (13 female)
novice readers had an RA of 5;7–8;0 years, 47 (24 female) intermediate readers had an RA of 8;1–
10;0, and 64 (26 female) advanced readers had an RA of 10;1–12;9 years. Each group is summarised
in Table 1. The three participant groups differed in CA and RA, as well as phonological awareness
and word classes scores (a test of semantic knowledge in which children select which of two words
go together) from the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals–Fourth Edition (CELF4; Semel,
Wiig, & Secord, 2006).

Stimuli and design

Each trial consisted of a seven-item list of unrelated words, followed by a probe word. One of the list
items was a target lure. The relationship between the target lure and the probe was manipulated
within-subjects. Eight lure-probe pairs shared morphological overlap (four derivations and four
inflections; e.g., drive–driver), eight pairs had pseudo-morphological overlap (e.g., off–offer), eight
had semantic overlap (e.g., all–everyone), and eight were unrelated (e.g., little, which was unrelated to
all words on the list). In each case the trial was also repeated with the probe word present (replacing
the target lure) on the list. A complete stimulus list is provided in the appendix. Hence, in total,
participants responded to 64 trials (32 target present and 32 target lure trials).
When the probe was a word that was absent from the list, it was always longer/more complex
than the target lure (e.g., the inflection was the probe and the root word was the target lure in the
morphological condition). When target lure and probe shared pseudo-morphological overlap, the
words shared orthographic and phonological properties but not semantic information. Semantic
overlap words shared semantic but not orthographic or phonological properties. In the morpholo-
gical overlap condition, words shared semantic, orthographic, and phonological properties and were
morphological relatives. Pseudo-morphological probes contained the same word final letters as
morphological probes (e.g., met–metal and post–postal). Independent samples t tests confirmed
that between conditions, target lures and probe words were matched for frequency and number of
orthographic neighbours from the Children’s Printed Word Database (ps > .4 and ps > .1; Masterson,
Stuart, Dixon, & Lovejoy, 2010), written frequencies from the Medical Research Council psycho-
linguistics database (ps > .2; Kucera & Francis, 1967; Wilson, 1988), word length (number of letters
ps > .1; syllables ps > .2), and the difference in the number of letters in the probe and target lures (ps
> .4; see Table 2).
To control for semantic similarity, 55 (seven male) native English speakers provided ratings for
100 word pairs using an online form. Participants had a mean age of 38 years (range = 25–68), a
minimum of college-level education, and A-level qualifications. Ratings were provided on a Likert
scale of 1 (completely different meanings) to 7 (practically the same meaning). Twenty-five word pairs
were morphological relatives, 25 were pseudo-morphologically related, 25 had high semantic relat-
edness, and 25 were unrelated. Experimental items were then selected to have high semantic
similarity in morphological and semantic overlap conditions (M rating = 3.85 or greater) and low
semantic similarity in the pseudo-morphological and unrelated conditions (M rating = 1.09 or less).
Independent samples t tests confirmed equally high semantic similarity for morphological and
semantic overlap, t(14) = −1.8, p = .1, and equally low for pseudo-morphological and unrelated
 476

Table 1. Characteristics of participants.

Exp 1: Typical Development Exp 2: OM Exp 3: Dyslexia
Novice Intermediate Advanced OM RA CA Dyslexic RA CA
N (n female) 24 (13) 47 (24) 64 (26) 29 (9) 29 (15) 29 (10) 27 (16) 27 (16) 27 (15)
Chronological age (total months)
M (SD) 86 (12.2) 103.6 (9.4) 115 (9.4) 111 (9) 102 (16) 110 (9) 111 (10) 92 (13) 111 (11)
Range 67–107 77–125 93–138 96–129 67–138 93–127 95–129 72–111 93–130
t test (nov, int) t(69) = −6.7, p < .001 (OM, RA) t(56) = 2.4, p = .019 (dys, RA) t(52) = 5.8, p < .001
(nov, adv) t(86) = −11.8, p < .001 (OM, CA) t(56) = 0.2, p = .9 (dys, CA) t(52) = −0.0, p = 1.0
(int, adv) t(109) = −6.3, p < .001
H. L. BREADMORE AND J. M. CARROLL

Reading age (from BAS3 word reading, total months)

M (SD) 86.9 (8) 110.2 (7) 133.8 (9.1) 110 (19) 112 (17) 126 (13) 90 (9) 92 (10) 125 (13)
Range 70–94 99–117 123–153 70–147 70–147 105–153 70–105 70–105 91–147
t test (nov, int) t(69) = −12.7, p < .001 (OM, RA) t(56) = −0.4, p = .7 (dys, RA) t(52) = −0.7, p = .5
(nov, adv) t(86) = −22.3, p < .001 (OM, CA) t(56) = −3.7, p < .001 (dys, CA) t(52) = −11.6, p < .001
(int, adv) t(109) = −14.8, p < .001
CELF4 phonological awareness raw score
M (SD) 67.9 (6.6) 72.6 (6.5) 76.2 (4.5) 69.8 (8.3) 73.5 (7.2) 75.3 (4.7) 66.9 (9.2) 69.1 (7.2) 73 (5.2)
Range 56–77 57–84 68–85 53–81 57–85 64–84 39–80 56–83 56–83
t test (nov, int) t(69) = −2.9, p = .006 (OM, RA) t(56) = −1.8, p = .073 (dys, RA) t(52) = −1.0, p = .3
(nov, adv) t(86) = −6.8, p < .001 (OM, CA) t(56) = −3.2, p = .003 (dys, CA) t(52) = −3.0, p = .004
(int, adv) t(109) = −3.5, p < .001
CELF4 word classes raw score
M (SD) 10.5 (5) 16.3 (4) 22.2 (7) 16.8 (5.5) 16.2 (6.7) 20.3 (6.4) 15.7 (7.2) 12.5 (5.8) 20.4 (6.3)
Range 2–20 5–26 9–36 5–26 2–36 11–33 0–32 2–25 9–33
t test (nov, int) t(69) = −5.0, p < .001 (OM, RA) t(56) = 0.3, p = .7 (dys, RA) t(52) = 1.8, p = .074
(nov, adv) t(86) = −7.4, p < .001 (OM, CA) t(56) = −2.3, p = .028 (dys, CA) t(52) = −2.6, p = .013
(int, adv) t(109) = −5.0, p < .001
Note. Exp. = Experiment; OM = otitis media; RA = reading age; CA = chronological age; nov = novice; int = intermediate; adv = advanced; dys = dyslexic; BAS3 = British Ability Scales: Third
Edition word reading test; CELF4 = Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals–Fourth Edition.
 SCIENTIFIC STUDIES OF READING 477

Table 2. Mean (standard deviation) descriptive statistics for target and probe stimuli in morphological, pseudo-morphological,
semantic, and unrelated conditions.
Morphological Pseudo-Morphological Semantic Unrelated
Target
Length: N letters 4.1 (0.6) 3.5(1.2) 3.8 (0.5) 4.5 (1.2)
N syllables 1.0 (0.0) 1.0 (0.0) 1.0 (0.0) 1.1 (0.4)
Children’s printed word frequency 602.1 (837.7) 612.8 (958.5) 965.4 (1657.0) 1118.6 (1573.8)
N orthographic neighbours 4.6 (2.5) 6.0 (5.0) 6.9 (3.9) 4.9 (4.9)
Kucera & Francis written frequency 246.5 (240.8) 367.8 (367.4) 505.5 (1022.8) 884.0 (1885.0)
Probe
Length: N letters 5.8 (0.5) 5.0 (1.5) 5.4 (1.2) 5.6 (1.2)
N syllables 1.6 (0.5) 1.6 (0.5) 1.3 (0.7) 1.6 (0.5)
Children’s printed word database: Frequency 714.9 (956.9) 686.6 (1820.0) 509.1 (656.8) 642.8 (1124.2)
N orthographic neighbours 1.5 (1.4) 4.5 (5.1) 3.0 (3.6) 2.1 (2.4)
Kucera & Francis written frequency 61.6 (75.1) 953.3 (2443.0) 149.6 (195.0) 220.1 (302.2)
Probe length—Target length 1.6 (0.5) 1.5 (0.5) 1.6 (1.4) 1.1 (1.6)
M similarity judgement 4.9 (0.6) 1.0 (0.0) 5.5 (0.7) 1.0 (0.0)

overlap, t(7.9) = 1.7, p = .1. The difference between the high semantic similarity (morphological and
semantic) and low semantic similarity conditions (unrelated and pseudo-morphological) was sig-
nificant (ps < .001). Despite our attempts at matching semantic relatedness, it is important to
recognise that the nature of the semantic overlap inevitably differs when words are morphological
relatives compared to when they are not. This is another reason why words that share morphemes
share more linguistic overlap than other words.
Across trials the position of the target word was counterbalanced from Position 1 to 7 on the list.
Filler words that were used on the lists had a similar distribution of word frequencies and length as
the experimental stimuli.

Procedure
Instructions were provided in writing and reiterated verbally, and two practice trials were completed
with feedback prior to beginning experimental trials. Participants were asked to memorise the lists of
words and then press a key to indicate whether a word had been on the preceding list.
A Toshiba Satellite Pro L850-1DV was used to run the experiment using E-prime 2.0
(Schneider, Eschman, & Zuccolotto, 2002) to control stimulus presentation and record responses.
Words were presented in lowercase, in the center of the screen, black on white in 28-point
Monaco font.
Each trial began with a fixation cross in the center of the screen, requiring a key press to
commence the trial. Seven words were then presented consecutively for 1,000 ms per word with a
500 ms interstimulus interval (blank screen). After each list there was a blank screen (1,000 ms), red
question mark (500 ms), and blank screen (500 ms), and then the probe was displayed in red until
the participant responded. To respond “yes, the word was on the list” participants pressed the C key
with their left index finger. To respond “no, the word was not on the list” participants pressed M
with their right index finger. Stickers depicting a tick and a cross were placed over the appropriate
keys. Every 10 trials participants viewed a scoreboard with a short animation as an incentive to
continue (scores were linked to speed and accuracy).

Results and discussion

The dependent variable in our analyses was d'. d' is a measure of sensitivity based on signal detection
theory (Green & Swets, 1966), which removes response bias. This is a calculation that allows one to
consider rates of correct detection after taking into account rates of false alarms. For a detailed
description of how and why to calculate d', see Stanislaw and Todorov (1999). We calculated d' from
each participants’ proportion of responses that were hits and false alarms1 within each condition,
478 H. L. BREADMORE AND J. M. CARROLL

adding 0.5 to each cell to avoid infinite d’ (Macmillan & Creelman, 2005; Stanislaw & Todorov,
1999). Here, we are interested in whether the noise or the confusion caused by the overlapping
linguistic relationship between the probe and target lure reduces d' (by increasing false alarms). High
d' indicates high sensitivity to the presence and absence of the probe on the list—a good ability to
distinguish between the probe and target lure. Zero d' indicates a complete lack of sensitivity to the
presence or absence of the probe—an inability to distinguish between probe and target lure. Based
on our hypotheses, we expect advanced readers to have particularly low d' for words sharing
morphological overlap (e.g., postal-post), while the difference between d' on morphological and
pseudomorphological (e.g., metal-met) conditions distinguishes between ‘decoding first’ and other
theories. High d' would be expected in the unrelated condition, where there is no linguistic overlap.
All participants (in this and future studies) had d' greater than 0 in the unrelated condition,
indicating that they were able to perform the task in the absence of linguistic overlap between
probe and target lure.
A split-plot analysis of variance (ANOVA) with d' as the dependent variable was conducted by
participants and items (see Figure 1). In analyses by participants (F1), overlap (morphological, pseudo-
morphological, semantic, unrelated) was repeated-measures and participant group was between-subjects.
In analyses by items (F2), overlap was between-items and participant group (novice, intermediate,
advanced) repeated-measures. Because item variability was constrained by the stimulus design rather
than randomly sampled, participant effects are more appropriate than item effects for drawing conclu-
sions (Raaijmakers, Schrijnemakers, & Grenmen, 1999). Nonetheless, because all item variability cannot
be controlled, we include analyses by both participants and items. In the omnibus analyses, both main
effects were significant: overlap, F1(3, 396) = 34.5, p < .001, ŋp2 = 0.21; F2(3, 28) = 4.1, p = .016, ŋp2 = 0.30;
group F1(2, 132) = 15.9, p < .001, ŋp2 = 0.19; F2(2, 56) = 45.7, p < .001, ŋp2 = 0.62. The main effect of
group indicates that more proficient readers were more accurate overall. The main effect of overlap
indicates that accuracy differed across conditions. The interaction did not reach significance by partici-
pants (but did by items), F1(6, 396) = 1.8, p = .11; F2(6, 56) = 3.4, p = .006, ŋp2 = 0.27.
Planned comparisons contrasted each overlap condition to the unrelated condition to test
whether that specific linguistic feature created noise. Morphological overlap created noise, but the
magnitude was not influenced by literacy skill. The main effect of overlap (morphological, unrelated)
and group were significant, but the interaction was not significant by participant (although marginal
by items): overlap F1(1, 132) = 89.6, p < .001, ŋp2 = 0.40; F2(1, 14) = 8.7, p = .011, ŋp2 = 0.38; group
F1(2, 132) = 12.4, p < .001, ŋp2 = 0.16; F2(2, 28) = 22.2, p < .001, ŋp2 = 0.61; interaction F1(2,
132) = 0.9, p = .4, ŋp2 = 0.01; F2(2, 28) = 3.2, p = .054, ŋp2 = 0.19.
Pseudo-morphological overlap created noise, and the magnitude was not affected by literacy skill.
The main effects of overlap (pseudo-morphological, unrelated) and group were significant, but the
interaction was not: overlap F1(1, 132) = 26.5, p < .001, ŋp2 = 0.17; F2(1, 14) = 5.2, p = .039,
ŋp2 = 0.27; group F1(2, 132) = 18.3, p < .001, ŋp2 = 0.22; F2(2, 28) = 40.8, p < .001, ŋp2 = 0.75;
interaction F1(2, 132) = 0.3, p = .7, ŋp2 = 0.01; F2(2, 28) = 0.1, p = .9, ŋp2 = 0.01.
Semantic overlap created noise, but the magnitude was influenced by literacy skill. The main
effect of group was significant, the main effect of overlap (semantic, unrelated) was significant
(by participant but not items), and the interaction was significant by items but not participants:
overlap F1(1,132) = 9.8, p = .002, ŋp2 = 0.07; F2(1, 14) = 1.8, p = .2, ŋp2 = 0.11; group F1(2,
132) = 11.9, p < .001, ŋp2 = 0.15; F2(2, 28) = 20.1, p < .001, ŋp2 = 0.59; interaction F1(2,
132) = 2.4, p = .097, ŋp2 = 0.04; F2(2, 28) = 6.4, p = .005, ŋp2 = 0.31. Simple effects indicated that
the difference between semantic and unrelated conditions was not significant for novice readers
but was for intermediate and advanced readers (by participants): novice t1(23) = 0.2, p = .9; t2

1
Hits are the proportion of trials when the probe occurred on the list that its presence was correctly identified. False alarms are the
proportion of times when the probe was not on the list that participants incorrectly identified the probe as present (i.e., when
the matched target lure was there instead).
 SCIENTIFIC STUDIES OF READING 479

Figure 1. Typically developing novice, intermediate, and advanced readers’ sensitivity (d') to the presence of the probe on the list
when a target word shared morphological, pseudo-morphological, or semantic overlap, or was unrelated. Note. Error bars indicate
standard error.

(14) = 1.3, p = .23; intermediate t1(46) = −3.4, p = .001; t2(14) = −1.6, p = .12; advanced t1
(63) = −3.1, p = .003; t2(14) = −1.9, p = .08.
Finally, to examine whether the noise created by morphological overlap could be distinguished
from other forms of linguistic overlap, we compared the morphological condition first to pseudo-
morphological and then semantic. In the comparison between morphological and pseudo-morpho-
logical conditions, the main effect of overlap was significant (by participants but not items): F1(1,
132) = 24.2, p < .001, ŋp2 = 0.16; F2(1, 14) = 1.4, p = .25, ŋp2 = 0.09; the main effect of group was
significant: F1(2, 132) = 10.5, p < .001, ŋp2 = 0.14; F2(2, 28) = 26.6, p < .001, ŋp2 = 0.67; and the
interaction was marginal: F1(2, 132) = 2.6, p = .079, ŋp2 = 0.04; F2(2, 28) = 3.2, p = .055, ŋp2 = 0.19.
Simple effects analyses indicated that accuracy in the morphological condition was lower than
pseudo-morphological for intermediate and advanced readers, but not novice readers: novice t1
(23) = −0.8, p = .5; t2(14) = −0.4, p = .7; intermediate t1(46) = −3.6, p = .001; t2(14) = −0.9, p = .4;
advanced t1(63) = −5.9, p < .001; t2(14) = −1.8, p = .09. Hence, morphological overlap created more
noise than pseudo-morphological overlap for intermediate and advanced readers but not novices.
In the comparison between morphological and semantic conditions, the main effect of overlap was
significant (marginal by items): F1(1, 132) = 49.2, p < .001, ŋp2 = 0.27; F2(1, 14) = 4.1, p = .063, ŋp2 = 0.23; the
effect of group was significant; F1(2, 132) = 5.8, p = .004, ŋp2 = 0.08; F2(2, 28) = 8.6, p = .001, ŋp2 = 0.38; but
the interaction was not; F1(2, 132) = 1.1, p = .35, ŋp2 = 0.02; F2(2, 28) = 1.6, p = .22, ŋp2 = 0.10. Therefore,
morphological overlap consistently created more noise than semantic overlap regardless of literacy skill.
In summary, we observed a general increase in performance on the task with development.
However, we also found specific influences of literacy ability on particular linguistic processes.
Morphological, pseudo-morphological, and semantic overlap between probe and target lure all
created noise and reduced typically developing children’s accuracy. Consistent with hypotheses,
the amount of noise caused by semantic overlap was smaller for novice than intermediate readers.
Nonetheless, morphological overlap created more noise than semantic overlap for all participants.
The difference between morphological and pseudo-morphological overlap was also influenced by
literacy skill. These conditions created equal amounts of noise for novice readers, whereas inter-
mediate and advanced readers were less accurate in the morphological overlap condition. Semantic
and morphological information had little effect on novice readers beyond any co-occurring overlap
in orthography/phonology.
480 H. L. BREADMORE AND J. M. CARROLL

Experiment 2: Otitis Media

Experiment 2 examines use of linguistic information in short-term memory by children with a
history of OM (repeated ear infection). OM causes fluctuating hearing levels that may cause
phonological impairments, but literacy is typically mildly delayed or unimpaired (Roberts,
Burchinal, & Zeisel, 2002; Teele, Klein, Chase, Menyuk, & Rosner, 1990; Winskel, 2006). If dyslexic
children’s reported difficulties with morphology result from their underlying phonological difficul-
ties, one would expect to see a similar pattern of results in other groups of children who have
phonological impairments—such as those with OM.
Unlike dyslexia, in OM we understand what has caused phonological impairments and have little
reason to expect deficits in semantic or morphological processing (Carroll & Breadmore, under
review). We also know that OM generally has only a small effect on literacy ability, so one would
expect these children to generally behave similarly to typically developing peers (of the same reading
ability). However, if a phonological impairment necessarily constrains processing of morphological
information, children with OM should differ from typically developing children.
Consistent with the view of phonological difficulties as a possible cause of morphological
difficulties (Cunningham & Carroll, 2015), we predict that the phonological difficulties resulting
from OM will also impair morphological and semantic processing compared to age-matched
typically developing peers. Because children with OM have been shown to have variable literacy
outcomes, we also compare against pairwise matched typically developing children of the same
reading ability. In this way we can examine whether patterns of strengths and weaknesses are in line
with reading level (Bradley & Bryant, 1978; Joanisse et al., 2000) or whether children with OM show
unusual patterns of development. This control is standard in dyslexia research but has rarely been
included in research into literacy in OM.

Method
Methodology was identical to previous experiments, only participants differed.

Participants
Participants with a history of OM were recruited from the same schools as participants in
Experiment 1. There were 29 children (nine female) whose parents reported a history of repeated
ear infections (more than seven episodes by age 3) or a clinical diagnosis of Glue Ear or OM. Each of
these children was individually pairwise matched to two typically developing children, one matched
for RA and one for CA. Two participants had missing data—two missing trials for one OM
participant and one missing trial for one RA. All children were monolingual native English speakers,
and none reported dyslexia. Participant group summary information is provided in Table 1. Note
that there is some overlap in the reading ability of RA- and CA-matched children, as several children
with OM were able to read age appropriately. Independent sample t tests confirmed that OM
children did not differ from RA-matched controls on any background measures apart from age.
In contrast, they were significantly lower than CA-matched controls on every background measure
apart from age.

Results and discussion

The d' was computed as in Experiment 1 (see Figure 2). If phonological difficulties impair morpho-
logical and semantic processing, then children with OM will have equally low d' on the morpholo-
gical and pseudo-morphological conditions. If they are able to process this information, then they
will have lower d' on the morphological overlap condition.
A split-plot ANOVA with d' as the dependent variable and participant group (OM, RA, CA) and
overlap (morphological, pseudo-morphological, semantic, unrelated) as independent variables indicated a
significant main effect of overlap: F1(3, 252) = 36.4, p < .001, ŋp2 = 0.30; F2(3, 28) = 3.8, p = .020,
 SCIENTIFIC STUDIES OF READING 481

Figure 2. Children with a history of repeated ear infection (otitis media [OM]), reading age (RA), and chronological age (CA)
matched typically developing readers’ sensitivity (d') to the presence of the probe on the list when a target word shared
morphological, pseudo-morphological, or semantic overlap, or was unrelated. Note. Error bars indicate standard error.

ŋp2 = 0.29. However, neither the main effect of group nor the interaction were significant: group F1(2,
84) = 0.4, p = .7; F2(2, 56) = 1.1, p = .4; interaction F1(6, 252) = 0.2, p = 1.0; F2(6, 56) = 0.5, p = .8.
Figure 2 indicates that OM children performed very similarly to their peers in every condition.
Planned comparisons in the morphological overlap condition confirmed that even in this condi-
tion the main effect of group was not significant: F1(2, 84) = 0.7, p = .5; F2(2, 14) = 1.7, p = .2. Thus,
although OM children’s mean d' in the morphological overlap condition was lower than their RA
and CA controls, the difference was not significant. Hence we conclude that children with OM
performed similarly to typically developing peers, and therefore morphological processing is not
necessarily constrained by phonological difficulties.

Experiment 3: Dyslexia
Experiment 3 examines the impact of dyslexia on use of linguistic information in short-term memory.
Dyslexic children commonly have verbal short-term memory difficulties, which have been attributed to
underlying limitations in phonological processing and/or executive function (Berninger et al., 2006;
Gathercole, Alloway, Willis, & Adams, 2006; Swanson & Berninger, 1995). Hence we hypothesise that
dyslexic children will show a generalised reduction in accuracy across conditions.
Of particular interest in the present study is whether all verbal processing is similarly impaired.
We compare children with dyslexia to typically developing children of the same CA and younger
children of the same reading ability. Differences between dyslexic and RA-matched children can thus
be ascribed to dyslexia rather than reading ability. Only if dyslexic children’s performance across
conditions differs from reading-ability-matched children can we conclude that these difficulties are
causally related to dyslexia rather than literacy development per se. In Experiment 1 we found that
typically developing novice readers focused on orthographic/phonological overlap but did not show
effects of morphological or semantic overlap. If dyslexic children’s reading is simply delayed, one
would expect to see a similar pattern. If, on the other hand, dyslexic children have a particular
difficulty with certain linguistic properties, differences might emerge in particular conditions. If
dyslexic children have a particular difficulty with morphological processing, beyond that attributable
to orthographic, phonological, and semantic overlap, they will differ from their peers on the
morphological overlap condition only.
482 H. L. BREADMORE AND J. M. CARROLL

Method
Methodology was identical to Experiment 1, only participants differed.

Participants
Children with dyslexia were selected from the same schools as typically developing children in
Experiment 1. Twenty-seven children (16 female) with a standardised score below 902 on British
Ability Scales: Third Edition word reading (Elliot & Smith, 2011) took part. Each child with dyslexia
was individually pairwise matched to two typically developing children, one for RA and one for CA.
One trial was missing from one RA child’s data. All children were monolingual native English
speakers, and none reported hearing impairment or a history of repeated ear infection. Participant
group summary information is provided in Table 1. Independent sample t tests confirmed that
dyslexic children did not differ significantly from RA on any measures apart from CA. Dyslexic
children were matched to CA on age but differed on every other measure.

Results and discussion

The d' was computed as in Experiment 1 (see Figure 3). If dyslexic children’s reading is simply delayed,
we predicted that d' in the morphological and pseudo-morphological conditions would be equally low
and that there would be now differences between dyslexic readers and RA-matched peers.
A split-plot ANOVA with d' as the dependent variable and participant group (dyslexic, RA, CA)
and overlap as independent variables indicated that the interaction and both main effects were
significant: interaction F1(3, 234) = 29.4, p < .001, ŋp2 = 0.27; F2(6, 56) = 2.7, p = .022, ŋp2 = 0.23;
overlap F1(6, 234) = 2.8, p = .013, ŋp2 = 0.07; F2(3, 28) = 5.1, p = .006, ŋp2 = 0.35; group F1(2,
78) = 3.2, p = .047, ŋp2 = 0.08; F2(2, 56) = 17.8, p < .001, ŋp2 = 0.39.
Because both the main effect of group and the interaction with overlap were significant in the
omnibus analyses, we compared performance between participant groups in each condition. Dyslexic
children’s sensitivity in the morphological condition was significantly less than RA or CA; RA t1

Figure 3. Dyslexic, reading-age- (RA) and chronological-age- (CA) matched typically developing readers’ sensitivity (d') to the
presence of the probe on the list when a target word shared morphological, pseudo-morphological, or semantic overlap, or was
unrelated. Note. Error bars indicate standard error.

2
Note that although our criteria using a standard score of 90 may seem lenient for the general population, children in the same
classrooms as our poor readers generally had better reading skills than the standardization sample. Despite excluding above-
average readers, the overall mean across all typically developing children in Experiments 1 to 3 was 105.7.
 SCIENTIFIC STUDIES OF READING 483

(52) = −3.0, p = .005; t2(7) = −4.3, p = .003; CA t1(52) = −3.6, p = .001; t2(7) = −4.5, p = .003.
However, dyslexic children didn’t differ from RA in any other condition: pseudo-morphological t1
(52) = 0.8, p = 0.4; t2(7) = 1.0, p = 0.3; semantic t1(52) = 0.1, p = 1.0; t2(7) = −0.3, p = 0.8; unrelated t1
(52) = 1.6, p = 0.1; t2(7) = 2.1, p = 0.08. Moreover, the difference between dyslexic children and CA
was not significant in any other condition (marginal by items only for pseudo-morphological and
unrelated conditions); pseudo-morphological t1(52) = −1.4, p = 0.2; t2(7) = −2.3, p = 0.053; semantic
t1(52) = −0.6, p = 0.5; t2(7) = −1.4, p = 0.2; unrelated t1(52) = −0.8, p = 0.4; t2(7) = −2.2, p = 0.06.
Hence, dyslexic children appear to have a circumscribed difficulty with the morphological condition
rather than generalised difficulty with the task.
To ensure that effects were not driven by generalised weaknesses in the task, planned compar-
isons contrasted each overlap condition to the unrelated condition.3 For children with dyslexia,
morphological and pseudo-morphological effects were significantly different from unrelated, but the
semantic effect was not; morphological t1(26) = −7.4, p < 0.001, t2(14) = −5.1, p < 0.001; pseudo-
morphological t1(26) = −3.9, p = 0.001, t2(14) = −2.1, p = 0.050; semantic t1(26) = −2.6, p = 0.014, t2
(14) = −1.5, p = 0.2. Next we examined whether the noise caused by morphological overlap differed
from pseudo-morphological4 and semantic5 overlap. In both cases the morphological effect was
larger; pseudo-morphological t1(26) = −4.5, p < 0.001; t2(14) = −2.7, p = 0.018; semantic t1
(26) = −4.7, p < 0.001; t2(14) = −3.3, p = 0.005.
To summarise, Experiment 3 indicates that children with dyslexia had a specific difficulty
distinguishing the probe from a target lure that shared morphological overlap, rather than a
generalised difficulty distinguishing the probe from a target lure regardless of the nature of overlap.
The noise caused by morphological overlap was significantly greater than semantic or pseudo-
morphological overlap. Moreover, children with dyslexia were less accurate than RA in the mor-
phological overlap condition, but equal in all other conditions. Hence we conclude that the
morphological overlap effect was significantly greater for children with dyslexia than any other
participant group.

Comparisons between experiments

Children with a history of OM and children with dyslexia were well matched by age and phonolo-
gical skill (see Table 1 for means). This was confirmed by independent samples t tests, which
revealed no significant differences in CA, t(54) = 0.0, p = .98; CELF phonological awareness, t
(54) = −1.2, p = .2; or CELF word classes, t(54) = −0.6, p = .5. However, children with dyslexia has
significantly lower reading levels, t(54) = −5.0, p < .001. Comparisons between these groups therefore
enable us to separate effects of phonological and literacy skills.
Comparing OM and dyslexic children’s d' sensitivity across all conditions revealed that only the
main effect of overlap was significant, F1(3, 162) = 37.0, p < .001, ŋp2 = 0.41; F2(3, 28) = 8.6, p < .001,
3
Analyses with the between-subjects factor participant group indicated that the interaction between overlap (overlap, unrelated)
and group (dyslexic, RA, CA) was significant only in comparison between unrelated and morphological conditions: F1(2, 78) = 6.1,
p = .003, ŋp2 = 0.14; F2(2, 28) = 6.6, p = .005, ŋp2 = 0.32; pseudo-morphological F1(2, 78) = 0.2, p = .8; F2(2, 28) = 0.1, p = .9;
semantic F1(2, 78) = 1.3, p = .3; F2(2, 28) = 2.0, p = .15. The main effect of overlap was significant in all comparisons:
morphological F1(1, 78) = 85.3, p < .001, ŋp2 = 0.52; F2(1, 14) = 13.1, p = .003, ŋp2 = 0.48; pseudo-morphological F1(1, 78) = 25.4,
p < .001, ŋp2 = 0.25; F2(1, 14) = 5.4, p = .036, ŋp2 = 0.28; semantic F1(1, 78) = 11.7, p = .001, ŋp2 = 0.13; F2(1, 14) = 1.9, p = .19,
ŋp2 = 0.12. As was the main effect of group: morphological F1(2, 78) = 4.5, p = .015, ŋp2 = 0.10; F2(2, 28) = 14.1, p < .001,
ŋp2 = 0.50; pseudo-morphological F1(2, 78) = 3.5, p = .034, ŋp2 = 0.08; F2(2, 28) = 13.6, p < .001, ŋp2 = 0.49; and semantic (by
items only) F1(2, 78) = 1.8, p = .2, ŋp2 = 0.04; F2(2, 28) = 6.8, p = .004, ŋp2 = 033.
4
Analyses with the independent factors participant group (dyslexic, RA, CA) and overlap (morphological, pseudo-morphological)
indicated significant main effects and interaction: overlap F1(1, 78) = 22.7, p < .001, ŋp2 = 0.23; F2(1, 14) = 2.9, p = .11,
ŋp2 = 0.17; group F1(2, 78) = 4.1, p = .02, ŋp2 = 0.10; F2(2, 28) = 12.6, p < .001, ŋp2 = 0.47; interaction F1(2, 78) = 4.6, p = .013,
ŋp2 = 0.11; F2(2, 28) = 4.5, p = .021, ŋp2 = 0.24.
5
Analyses with the independent factors participant group (dyslexia, RA, CA) and overlap (morphological, semantic indicated
significant main effects and interaction): overlap F1(1, 78) = 32.7, p < .001, ŋp2 = 0.30; F2(1, 14) = 5.2, p = .039, ŋp2 = 0.27; group
F1(2, 78) = 3.4, p = .039, ŋp2 = 0.08; F2(2, 28) = 9.1, p = .001, ŋp2 = 0.39; interaction F1(2, 78) = 3.1, p = .050, ŋp2 = 0.07; F2(2,
28) = 3.0, p = .068, ŋp2 = 0.17.
484 H. L. BREADMORE AND J. M. CARROLL

ŋp2 = 0.48. The main effect of group was significant by items but not participants, F1(1, 54) = 1.8,
p = .18; F2(1, 28) = 6.6, p = .016, ŋp2 = 0.19. The interaction was not significant, F1(3, 162) = 0.6,
p = .6; F2(3, 28) = 0.2, p = .9. Nonetheless, a planned comparison in the morphological overlap
condition revealed that dyslexic children’s accuracy was marginally less than OM children’s, F1(1,
54) = 4.0, p = .052, ŋp2 = 0.07; F2(1, 7) = 4.7, p = .066, ŋp2 = 0.40. This is not consistent with the view
that phonological impairments necessarily constrain morphological skill and literacy acquisition.

General discussion
A series of three experiments examined whether literacy level, phonological skill, or dyslexia
influenced the impact of linguistic overlap between a target lure on a list of words to be remembered
and a recognition probe. As predicted by dual/multiple route models of reading (Grainger et al.,
2012; Grainger & Ziegler, 2011), the more linguistic information that was shared between the probe
and target lure, the more likely participants were to incorrectly accept that the probe had been
present on the list. Hence, the probe paradigm is a useful tool to study morphological processes
without requiring explicit manipulation of morphemes or the necessity for rapid activation of lexical
items. Future research could further examine the cause of the effects within this paradigm by
manipulating serial position, scrutinizing the impact of degree of semantic or orthographic overlap,
and examining effects cross-linguistically.
Participant groups showed different profiles of performance on the tasks. Consistent with
“decoding first” accounts (Ehri, 1995; Ehri et al., 2013; Nunes et al., 1997b), novice readers (RA =
5;7–8;0 years, Experiment 1) did not show effects of morphological and semantic overlap, which
suggests that they use only orthographic and phonological features of words to perform the task, and
are not yet sensitive to the increased similarity of morphologically related items. In the semantic
overlap condition, these features do not overlap and so performance is good. In morphological and
pseudo-morphological conditions the overlap is good enough for novice readers to (incorrectly)
accept the probe as having been present on the list. This differs from intermediate and advanced
readers (RA = 9;1–12;9 years) whose performance on the task was reduced by both pseudo-
morphological and semantic overlap, and further still by morphological overlap. We conclude that
novice readers fail to access or activate the semantic and morphological properties of their lexical
representations, suggesting that their word recognition is not yet automatic.
Children with dyslexia (RA = 5;10–8;9 years, Experiment 3) also showed a generalised weakness
in the task and reduced semantic effect (semantic overlap did not differ from the unrelated
condition). However, unlike for novice readers, the effect of morphological overlap was larger
than any other condition. In fact, children with dyslexia had far more difficulty distinguishing the
probe from a target lure in the morphological overlap condition than reading ability, CA-matched
peers or children with OM. Thus, the combination of orthographic, phonological, semantic, and
morphological overlap meant that children with dyslexia were far more likely to incorrectly accept
that the probe had been on the preceding list. This difference cannot be explained away trivially by
claiming that children with dyslexia were somehow less able or slower to read the words on the list,
because they performed similarly to RA-matched children in all other conditions, nor can this
difference be explained purely by reference to orthographic/phonological or semantic properties, and
suggests that there is something unique about the way in which children with dyslexia process
morphology that differs from their peers and other children with phonological awareness difficulties.
This finding is not consistent with “decoding first” accounts (Ehri, 1995; Ehri et al., 2013; Nunes
et al., 1997b), because this suggests that children with dyslexia processed morphology but did so
inefficiently, which led them to confuse morphologically related words.
The fact that the children with OM showed age-appropriate performance on the task despite
having impairments in phonological awareness is also contrary to accounts highlighting the primacy
of phonological processing (Cunningham & Carroll, 2015) and suggests that different phonological
difficulties have different consequences on literacy development. Morphological skills can develop
 SCIENTIFIC STUDIES OF READING 485

well in the context of phonological difficulties, and therefore the difficulties that dyslexic children
have with morphology are not necessarily caused by difficulties with phonology.
This pattern of findings provides an interesting contrast with other tasks carried out with the
same sample of dyslexic children. The dyslexic children show morphological awareness and use of
morphology in spelling similar to RA controls and below the level of CA controls (Breadmore &
Carroll, in press). It therefore appears that children with dyslexia are reading ability appropriately
sensitive to morphology but do not use it effectively to support short-term memory for words. The
present study differs from many previous studies in that involves implicit morphological processing.
This could be why our findings contrast with some other studies examining morphological aware-
ness. However, we would argue that in comparison to explicit oral morphological awareness
measures, this implicit activation of morphology in the present study should be more closely linked
to that which occurs during reading.
The way in which dyslexic children used morphological information resulted in impaired
performance on this task. It could be that dyslexic children use lexical representations that lack
specificity in relation to morphological properties. That might be interpreted as children with
dyslexia relying more heavily on root morphemes but seems also to mean that they are paying
less attention to suffixes. Crucially, in this study the probe was always more complex than the target
(in morphological and pseudo-morphological conditions, the target lure was the root morpheme and
the probe was the root plus an additional suffix/pseudosuffix). This pattern of results cannot,
therefore, be explained as simple forgetting of word final graphemes. Rather, children with dyslexia
were more likely to incorrectly accept that they saw a longer, more complex word form, with
additional semantic and morphological information to the word they actually saw on the list. The
difficulty with this paradigm, however, is that it is impossible to identify at what stage of processing
this occurs. The lack of specification of the target could have occurred during encoding, storage, or
retrieval, or relate to underlying lexical representations for the words. Future research should aim to
distinguish between these factors.

Conclusions
This is the first published study to use a short-term memory probe paradigm to examine morpho-
logical processing in typical and atypical development. The evidence presented here supports the use
of this paradigm even with novice readers. By examining developmental differences, phonological
difficulties resulting from OM and dyslexia, the present study has wide generalizability. Our findings
indicate that novice typically developing readers confuse words with a large amount of visual overlap
but not semantic overlap. Morphological and semantic features become increasingly important in
reading acquisition. In contrast, children with dyslexia find words that share morphological features
particularly confusable. Phonological difficulties in the absence of significant literacy impairment
(children with OM) did not impact on performance on the task. This, we argue, indicates that
dyslexia alters the processing of morphology and that this is not simply because of literacy or
phonological skills per se but is unique to dyslexia.

Acknowledgments
We would like to extend our thanks to Andrew Olson and Andrea Krott for their assistance in designing an earlier
version of the experimental paradigm, as reported in Breadmore (2007). We also thank the children, teachers and
research assistants who took part in the study.
486 H. L. BREADMORE AND J. M. CARROLL

Funding
This research was funded by a Nuffield Foundation Grant for Research and Innovation (reference EDU/40250). This
project was funded by the Nuffield Foundation, but the views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily
those of the Foundation.

ORCID
Helen L. Breadmore http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3050-8908
Julia M. Carroll http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3614-6883

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 SCIENTIFIC STUDIES OF READING 489

Appendix

Table A1. Stimuli.

Condition Word Pair (Target–Probe)
Morphological post–postal
drive–driver
farm–farmer
dirt–dirty
ask–asked
look–looked
long–longer
thing–things
Pseudo-morphological met–metal
off–offer
should–shouldera
stud–study
see–seed
war–ward
corn–corner
hi–hisa
Semantic all–everyone
bag–sack
ball–globe
home–house
pole–stick
road–street
rock–stone
soil–earth
Unrelated called–little
car–hope
donkey–artist
had–cleaning
house–going
join–bread
plane–shower
scar–ninth
a
These items do not share full phonological overlap.